Where: Murrah Hall – Bermagui/Tathra RdWhen: Thursday 28th & Friday 29th March @ 7pm • Saturday 30th & Sunday 31st March @ 3pm Duration: Approx 2hrs including interval Tickets: $25-15 @ TryBooking.com/BASCJ or at the door Murrah Hall Production Bound for World Stage
Local actor and theatre artist Patrick Dickson is preparing to take his acclaimed one-man play ‘Victor Ego or The Brainstorm’ overseas to its’ spiritual home, the Island of Guernsey in the UK.
Where better to refine and refresh the production before embarking on the world stage than back at the Murrah Hall, where ‘Victor Ego or The Brainstorm’ had its debut season in July last year.
Patrick, who conceived, wrote and also performs ‘Victor Ego’, now has the exciting opportunity to take the production to the island where he grew up, and where the play’s subject Victor Hugo lived and wrote for 15 years from 1855.
Growing up on Guernsey Patrick became fascinated, perhaps obsessed, with the story of Victor Hugo’s 15 year exile on the island and with the novel he wrote there, ‘The Toilers of the Sea’. We all know of ‘Les Misérables’ and ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’, but unlike his contemporary Dickens, we know very little about Hugo’s immense and tumultuous life and career.
“Victor Hugo was a madman who thought he was Victor Hugo” – Jean Cocteau
The play is a distillation of a gothic romance and an exploration of the imagination and alchemy of one of the greatest literary and political forces of the nineteenth century. The return season at the Murrah Hall is an opportunity for theatre lovers who missed the production last winter to see this unique play in an intimate space.
Hugo is at work in his studio as he pulls together the essential ingredients of a ripping yarn, which will become his next best-selling novel. He conjures up a cast of characters and spices their relationships with betrayal, obsession, love, sacrifice and a dash of skullduggery. The beautiful, rugged seascape of the Norman Archipelago isn’t simply a back-drop; for Hugo it’s a powerful and unpredictable player in the drama of life and death.
Intercut with the brainstorming of his latest romantic adventure we are with Hugo as he pens letters… to his friend, to his mistress and to his publisher… We discover how the lived experience of the writer impacts the creative process… how his own love, pain and frustration finds its way on to the page.
Hugo was a ground-breaking writer and he was also ahead of his time as a visual artist. Bermagui’s talented projection artist Scott Baker brings Hugo’s own drawings to life illustrating the ‘brainstorm’ of the author.
Maeliosa Stafford directs the work, which will appeal to audiences across the country and around the world.
Now living in the Bega Valley, Patrick’s acting career spans more than four decades and includes stage, screen and radio. Audiences may recognise him from ‘Seachange’ or Bell Shakespeare productions, or they may know his work on the independent theatre scene with O’Punksky’s and other companies.
Where: Murrah Hall – Bermagui/Tathra Rd
When: Thursday 28th & Friday 29th March @ 7pm • Saturday 30th & Sunday 31st March @ 3pm
Duration: Approx 2hrs including interval
Tickets: $25-15 @ TryBooking.com/BASCJ or at the door
